alchemy in the age of counterpoint

Alchemy and Counterpoint in an Age of ReasonAuthor(s): David YearsleySource: Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 51, No. 2 (Summer, 1998), pp.201-243Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/831977 .Accessed: 21/09/2011 03:44

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

University of California Press and American Musicological Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to Journal of the American Musicological Society.

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucal

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=amusoc

http://www.jstor.org/stable/831977?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

Alchemy and Counterpoint in an Age of Reason

DAVID YEARSLEY

Wie das zu thun und zu voH bringn Darvon die Weisn viel Liedlin singn.

Of how to do that and perfect it Sing the philosophers many songs.

-Anonymous, De prima materia lapidis philosophorum

n the summer of 1730, Wolfenbiittel Kantor Heinrich Bokemeyer received a letter from his friend and frequent correspondent Johann Gottfried Walther, organist at the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in

Weimar, relating a curious encounter.' On Wednesday the nineteenth of July, Walther had made one of his customary visits to the ducal library in Weimar, perhaps on his way to do some research for his Musicalisches Lex- icon, which he would publish two years later. He found the library closed, but the elderly curator of the adjacent ducal Kunst-Kammer saw Walther waiting outside and invited him in to survey its collection of scientific in- struments.2 On entering this small museum of natural history and technology, Walther noticed a barometer and asked the Kunst-KIAmmerer if it gave accurate readings. The old man replied that since the device was not airtight, the mercury was inactive. Much to Walther's surprise, the curator then launched into a lengthy monologue on the nature of mercury, claiming that whoever knew how to treat this substance with the "philosophical fire" (Philosophisches Feuer) and "the sun" (i.e., gold) could become very lucky, even wealthy. In response to Walther's question as to the nature of this philosophical fire (not real flames but a metaphor for an alchemical reaction), the old man described an elaborate machine he had seen some

I would like to thank Karol Berger, Lenore Coral, Laurence Dreyfus, Thomas Grey, Arthur Groos, Annette Richards, James Webster, Neal Zaslaw, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and my anonymous readers for their help on this essay.

1. Johann Gottfried Walther to Heinrich Bokemeyer, 3 August 1730, Johann Gottfried Walther: Briefe, ed. Klaus Beckmann and Hans-Joachim Schulze (Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag fiir Musik, 1987), 122-24.

2. The Weimar Kunst-Kammer was founded in 1700 by Duke Wilhelm Ernst, who would later be J. S. Bach's employer. This reference comes from Goethe, who would later spend a good deal of time in the Kunst-Kammer himself. See Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Werke, 60 vols. (Stuttgart and Tiibingen: J. G. Cotta, 1827-42), 55:157.

[Journal of the American Musicological Society 1998, vol. 51, no. 2] ? 1998 by the American Musicological Society. All rights reserved. 0003-0139/98/5102-0001$2.00

202 Journal of the American Musicological Society

thirty years earlier, which had been constructed using twenty-four glasses that ground metal to a fine gray powder.3 This powder, unfortunately, had consisted only of "mere mercury"; that is, it contained none of the rare, philosophical (i.e., alchemically active) mercury that could produce a true

philosophical fire, and consequently the process had failed to yield any gold. This chance meeting with the Kunst-Kdimmerer and the discovery that he was also an alchemist left a lasting impression on Walther. Two weeks later he wrote to Bokemeyer to ask him about the feasibility of con-

structing an elaborate grinding machine like the one the Weimar Kunst- Kiimmerer had described.4 Could such a contraption be made so as to

produce a purified substance that could then be transformed into gold? The foregoing vignette is just one example of the lengthy and numerous

musings on Hermetic science to be found in the letters Bokemeyer received from Walther, whose fascination with the occult has been a source of some discomfort for post-Enlightenment scholars. Georg Schiinemann, who discussed Walther's letters in an article published in the Bach-Jahrbuch of 1933, could barely conceal his disappointment and frustration at Walther's

forays into Hermeticism.5 Schiinemann tried to shift blame for what he saw as Walther's misguided interest in alchemy onto Bokemeyer, who was able to lead his friend into Hermetic study because, according to Schtinemann, Walther "was by nature somewhat gullible, and he was inclined toward

self-absorption in obscure material."6 If we accept this view of Walther, what then happens to his credibility as author of the Musicalisches Lexicon, one of the most important historical documents of early eighteenth-century musical life in Germany? As for Hermeticism itself, Schiinemann brushed it aside: "It is difficult to find one's way through this occult science or to pick out one piece of true observation, or astrological or chemical-physical knowledge, from the morass of mystical, occult, and barmy material."7

3. The conversion of a metal into a fine powder is known in alchemy as calcination. E. J. Holmyard, Alchemy (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1957), 271.

4. Walther mentioned this same Kunst-Ktimmerer in a letter to Bokemeyer written exactly one year later, remarking that he had unfortunately not spoken with the elderly curator again. Walther to Bokemeyer, 3 August 1731, Walther Briefe, 141.

5. Georg Schiinemann, "J. G. Walther und H. Bokemeyer," Bach-Jahrbuch 30 (1933): 86-118, esp. 117.

6. Ibid.: "Ein wenig abergliubisch war er von Nature, der Hang zum Sich-Einspinnen in

entlegenen Materien lag in ihm." 7. Ibid.: "Sehr schwer, sich durch diese Geheimwissenschaft durchzufinden oder gar aus

dem Wust des Mystischen, Okkulten und Verdrehten ein Stuick wahrer Beobachtung oder gar astrologischer und chemische-physikalischer Erkenntnisse herauszusuchen." Schiinemann's efforts to clean up history are misguided, for the task of exonerating Walther from responsi- bility for these alchemical wanderings is a questionable one, though he was clearly encouraged by the more advanced Hermeticist, Bokemeyer. Schiinemann acknowledges that Walther wrote to Bokemeyer and told the Wolfenbuittel Kantor that he never doubted the validity of

alchemy and occult philosophy. Further, Walther told his friend that he had bought many alchemical treatises when he was still a student at Erfurt's Ratsgymnasium, which he entered

Alchemy and Counterpoint 203

Schiinemann extolled the musical and historical value of Walther's letters, while trying to explain away what he saw as the eruptions of threatening and irrational nonsense. More than fifty years after the appearance of Schtinemann's article, Klaus Beckmann and Hans-Joachim Schulze edited the complete Walther letters, publishing these long, turgid forays into the occult. The editors refer to Walther's alchemical ramblings only in passing, describing them as "unexpected" though not atypical of the period,s yet the underlying assumption is that Hermetic science has no real bearing on eighteenth-century musical thought.9 Only Werner Braun, in a 1969 article, speculated that there might have been a connection between Boke- meyer's fascination with alchemy and his views on music.'0

Schiinemann's attempts to deny the possible cogency of Walther's Her- meticism and to cast Bokemeyer as a purveyor of useless, and perhaps dangerously unhinged, modes of knowledge parallel efforts by historians of science to suppress the importance of alchemy for many of the leading figures of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century rationalism, most fa- mously Newton and Leibniz." But over the past twenty years, scholars have begun to investigate the significance, even centrality, of alchemy in the

in 1697 at the age of 13, and left five years later. Walther shared his interest with his elderly father, who was still alive during the first years of Walther's correspondence with Bokemeyer. See Walther to Bokemeyer, 10 March 1729 and 24 March 1730, WaltherBriefe, 77 and 117.

8. Klaus Beckmann and Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Vorwort" to Walther Briefe, 11. 9. Along similar lines, Tim Carter, in a recent essay, cites five letters written by Mon-

teverdi that describe his earnest activities as an alchemist; yet Carter suggests that "perhaps we should not take [Monteverdi's alchemical experiments] too seriously." This conclusion comes in spite of the fact that Carter's essay is concerned with the transition from an epistemology of resemblance to one of representation, and its relation to changing aesthetic conceptions manifested in Monteverdi's music. It seems to me, however, that the relevance of occult practice may be discounted here too easily. Alchemy was of course predicated on an epistemology of resemblance, and its theoretical apparatus relied on correspondences between the behavior of metals and countless other phenomena in the cosmos. This web of interrelatedness extended to the alchemist himself. Monteverdi's documented interest in alchemy during the middle of the 1620s came at a time when he was, according to Carter, concentrating on matters of likeness and imitation in his music; thus alchemy could well be brought to bear on this dialectic of resemblance and representation discussed by Carter. See Tim Carter, "Re- semblance and Representation: Towards a New Aesthetic in the Music of Monteverdi," in "Con che soavitd": Studies in Italian Opera, Song, and Dance, 1580-1740, ed. Iain Fenlon and Tim Carter (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 118-34.

10. Werner Braun, "Bachs Stellung im Kanonstreit," in Bach-Interpretationen, ed. Martin Geck (G6ttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1969), 106-11.

11. For the case against the importance of alchemy in Newton's thought see I. Bernard Cohen, "The Principia, Universal Gravitation, and the 'Newtonian Style,' in Relation to the Newtonian Revolution in Science: Notes on the Occasion of the 250th Anniversary of New- ton's Death," in Contemporary Newtonian Research, ed. Zev Bechler (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1982), 21-108. For a characteristic dismissal of Leibniz's interest in alchemy see Roger Ariew, "G. W. Leibniz: Life and Works," in The Cambridge Companion to Leibniz, ed. Nicho- las Jolley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 18-42, esp. 21.


mature thought of Newton and Leibniz, both of whom were committed

alchemists, and has done much to correct the general tendency toward dis-

missing the role of the occult in the work of men who have become for us

symbols of scientific progress. Alchemy was Newton's primary interest from about 1668 to 1696, when he left Cambridge for the Royal Mint in London. As for Leibniz, he was keen to make his fortune and invested

frequently in alchemical ventures; he was an easy mark for opportunistic alchemists. Leibniz's dying words concerned a report that gold had been transmuted from iron nails with the aid of a spring.12 As Charles Webster has pointed out, "We have come to accept an almost perfect correlation between the rise of science and the decline of magic."'3 Rather than at-

tempt to explain away the tenacity of alchemy into the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries, recent scholarship has shown how occult and reli-

gious elements shaped Newton's own work on optics and gravitation, as well as Leibniz's monadology.

Likewise, the relevance of alchemy to eighteenth-century musical

thought cannot be so readily discarded, as it was by Schiinemann, or by- passed, as it was by Beckmann and Schulze. Walther's own correspondence hints at the links between music and Hermetic science. He first discusses

alchemy in a letter to Bokemeyer, the longest that survives, dated 3 Oc- tober 1729. After a colorful account of his life, Walther excuses himself for not yet having answered the "very important point of your [Bokemeyer's] Occult Philosophy" ("sehr wichtiger Punct ihrer Geheimen Philosophie"), explaining that he possesses "only a superficial knowledge" ("nur eine superficielle Wifenschaft") of the discipline.'4 In the subsequent discussion, however, he lists the considerable contents of his own Hermetic library (at least twelve bound volumes, some containing a number of works) and writes of his fascination with the intricacies and obscurities of the theory and practice of alchemy.'5 Walther writes that, unlike others, he has never doubted the validity of this "supreme and most beautiful art" ("allerh6chste und sch6nste Kunst").16 Alchemy and music also appear alongside one another in the lengthy postscript to the letter, where he writes,

12. Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs and Margaret C. Jacob, Newton and the Culture ofNewtoni- anism (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1995), esp. 21-27; Betty Jo Teeter

Dobbs, The Janus Faces of Genius: The Role ofAlchemy in Newton's Thought (Cambridge: Cam-

bridge University Press, 1991); Allison P. Coudert, Leibniz and the Kabbalah (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995), esp. 7, 95-97; and G. MacDonald Ross, Leibniz (Ox- ford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 5.

13. See Charles Webster, From Paracelsus to Newton: Magic and the Making of Modern Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 1.

14. In this quotation the italics reflect "non-German" words highlighted in the original. Subsequent use of italics in the German is meant to convey this distinction found in the eighteenth-century texts cited.

15. Walther to Bokemeyer, 3 October 1729, Walther Briefe, 65-83, esp. 76. 16. Ibid., 76.


Just as you [went] through the precepts 1 through 7 of occult philosophy, so have I come to understand, by contemplating the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8, the instruction on canon so extensively discussed by Zarlino, of which the aforementioned author proclaims that (with respect to judgment) it is the highest level of composition."

The connection between Walther's own attempts at numerological exegesis --which of course has a long tradition within occult philosophy--and Zarlino's discussion of canon is not clear, but beyond his intimations of hidden connections between the numbers and their referents, the language itself is suggestive. Just as Walther, presumably following Bokemeyer's lead, described alchemy as the "highest and most beautiful art," so, too, Zarlino and his eighteenth-century German followers saw canon as the "highest level of composition."'8 As Walther himself would have recognized, this description of counterpoint evoked the ubiquitous references in the Hermetic literature to alchemy as "an art above all other arts, the noblest" ("eine Kunst / vor allen andern Kiinsten / die Edelste").19 Both disciplines occupied the place of honor in their respective branches of knowledge: alchemy was, for the devotees of Hermetic knowledge, preeminent in philosophy, while canon was, for enthusiasts of counterpoint, the pinnacle of music.

Although none of Bokemeyer's correspondence with Walther survives, it is clear from Walther's letter that Bokemeyer was an "adept," a skilled and widely read alchemist. In his letters to Bokemeyer, Walther referred to alchemy as "your secret philosophy," and indeed, as his confusion grew when dealing with Hermetic texts and concepts, he turned to Bokemeyer for clar- ification.20 Bokemeyer appears to have owned a considerable collection of

17. Ibid., 81: "gleichwie Mein Herr durch den Schliilel 1. u. 7. zur geheimen Philoso- phie, also ich durch die Betrachtung der Zahlen 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. u. 8. hinter die von Zarlino so weitlaiifftig vorgetragene Lehre der Consequenzen kommen bin, von welcher nurgedachter Auctor meldet: Daf (wegen des judicii) der h6chste Grad in der Composition sey." The seven precepts are probably those of the prolific occult writer and physician Paracelsus (1493- 1541). Walther himself owned several volumes by Paracelsus, including the Coelum Philo- sophorum, which contains these seven Schljflel of the metals.

18. Gioseffo Zarlino, TheArt ofCounterpoint, trans. Guy A. Marco and Claude V. Palisca (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), 126. For a German paraphrase of Zarlino's description of canon that would have been known to Walther see Christoph Bernhard, Tractatus compositionis augmentatus, in Die Kompositionslehre Heinrich Schfitzens in der Fassung seines Schalers Christoph Bernhard, ed. Joseph Miiller-Blattau, 2d ed. (Kassel: Birenreiter, 1963), 112.

19. Ulrich Poyselius, "Spiegel der Alchemie," in Eri•fnete Geheimnisse des Steins der Weisen oder Schatz-kammer derAlchymie (Hamburg: Christian Liebezeit und Theodor Christoff Fel- giner, 1718), 214-29, esp. 214. This collection originally appeared as a five-volume set en- titledAurei Velleris oder Der Guldin Schatz und Kunstkammer (Hamburg: Christian Liebezeit, 1708). See Walther to Bokemeyer, 3 August 1731, Walther Briefe, 138-48, esp. 143.

20. Walther to Bokemeyer, 10 March 1729 and 19 July 1730, WaltherBriefe, 65-83, esp. 76, and 120-21.


Hermetic tracts, although Walther sometimes provided his colleague with

bibliographic information about various books he had seen (perhaps in the Weimar library), works in his own collection, and treatises he was trying to acquire. The two musicians had a lively exchange concerning Hermetic science.

Along with his second letter to Bokemeyer, written in April of 1729, Walther sent his friend one of his own cantatas, which contained an aria on the text "Ketischeste Flammen brennt ewiglich fort" ("The most chaste of flames shines forth eternally"), set as a six-voice perpetual canon. Walther noted that since it was impossible for the voices to stop all at once, his canon could "represent a kind of infinity."21 He went on to mention that he had sent the piece to Johann Mattheson, who had judged it favorably; Walther stressed that the noted critic's approval had extended to the canonic aria. Hoping that Bokemeyer "had not given up all consideration of the study of canon," Walther also sent his Wolfenbtittel colleague some other pieces which would further demonstrate that canonic writing was not merely to be done as a school exercise but could still be used effectively in church music.22

One senses that Walther is choosing his words carefully here: along with numerous other musicians across Germany, he had followed the dispute between Bokemeyer and Mattheson over the merits of canon, entitled (by Mattheson) "Die canonische Anatomie" and conducted throughout 1723 and into 1724 in the pages of Mattheson's music periodical Critica musica.23 Bokemeyer was certainly well equipped to engage Mattheson in a polemic on this highly contentious issue, since he had amassed an impres- sive collection of German and Italian treatises on learned counterpoint.24 Although he himself composed Italianate music and, like Mattheson, had learned to sing in the modern Italian style as a youth, Bokemeyer upheld the conservative belief in both the importance of canon in musical pedagogy and its inherent aesthetic value, a notion based on Zarlino's claim that canon represented the "highest level of composition."25

21. Walther to Bokemeyer, 4 April 1729, Walther Briefe, 33: "einen typum der Unend- lichkeit darstellen konnen."

22. Ibid.: "nicht alle Consideration vor die canonische Arbeit werden abgelegt haben." 23. "Die canonische Anatomie" is printed in Critica musica, 2 vols. (Hamburg: the

author, 1722-25), 1:236-368. 24. The Italian theorists whose teachings are represented in the collection include Caris-

simi, Penna, Berardi, and Bononcini. For an inventory of these holdings see Harald Ktim- merling, Katalog der Sammlung Bokemeyer (Kassel: Barenreiter, 1970), 11. In describing canon and its frequent companion double counterpoint as "learned counterpoint" I follow Kerala Snyder, who examines the use of these procedures as intellectual tributes to colleagues in late seventeenth-century north Germany. See Kerala J. Snyder, "Dietrich Buxtehude's Stud- ies in Learned Counterpoint," this Journal 23 (1980): 544-64.

25. Zarlino, The Art of Counterpoint, 126.


By the first decades of the eighteenth century in Germany, canon and double counterpoint had come to epitomize the conflict between theory and practice in composition, and the role of the senses versus that of the intellect in musical judgment. In his highly esteemed Musikalische Diskurse of 1719, Johann Beer used canon and its companion device double counterpoint to encapsulate the debate: "Daily experience demonstrates that many orderly canons as well as [pieces of] double counterpoint which follow the rules seldom sound good, although they are not dissonant."26 But Beer was no enemy of learned counterpoint, and he cautioned against condemning such procedures outright, since they could, when properly handled, be pleasing to the ear; furthermore, knowledge of these strictest forms of counterpoint was required of a composer and would help him develop his musical faculties. Beer's position represents the moderate, and probably most widely held, view on the matter.

A radical departure from this middle ground can be found in Matthe- son's 1717 book Das beschiitzte Orchestre, the second volume of his Orches- tre trilogy, in which the gifted polemicist reduced to a silly diversion what had been for Zarlino, and continued to be for many musicians of Matthe- son's own day, the very symbol of compositional mastery: "One goes in for jocular apothegms while drinking a glass of wine or on a boring journey, inventing canons and singing them for fun and in order to pass the time. Indeed, these pieces are very artful but of little use."27 In his typically off- hand manner, Mattheson argues that the effort spent in creating sophisti- cated canonic compositions is largely wasted since the modern style has little room for such intricacies. A relentless advocate of the natural, Mat- theson cast the complexity of canon as an aesthetic evil in general, although he admitted the use of strict counterpoint in church music.

In the same year that Das beschaitzte Orchestre appeared, Mattheson published and edited the third part of Die musicalische Handleitung by the Copenhagen organist Friederich Erhardt Niedt, who had died nine years earlier. With a seemingly single-minded desire to enrage musical conser- vatives (and probably moderates as well), Niedt repeatedly lampooned learned counterpoint and its practitioners: "Many an honest bore has spent many an hour of his life trying to excel at canons. ... We should let be what these old [Canon Masters] out of childish ignorance believe to be good, for

26. Johann Beer, Musikalische Diskurse (Niirnberg: Peter Conrad Monath, 1719; reprint, Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag for Musik, 1982), 34: "die tigliche Erfahrung bezeuget / dafS nicht allein viele nach den Regelen ordinirte canones, sondern auch der gedoppelte contrapunct ... selten wol klinge: gleichwol klinget es doch also / dafS man nicht sagen / kan es dissonire." Mattheson cited this passage in "Die canonische Anatomie" (p. 310), but in typically selective fashion, he did not mention the more complimentary views on double counterpoint to be found in Beer's book. See Beer, Musikalische Diskurse, 95 and 100.

27. Johann Mattheson, Das beschfitzte Orchestre (Hamburg: Schiller, 1717), 139: "Scherzhaffte Apophthegmata pflegt man wohl bei einem Glaf Wein/ it. bei langwierigen Reisen / auf diese Canonische Art anzubringen / und zur Lust herum zu singen / damit die Zeit hingehe; sonst ist der Nutz dieses Styli sehr geringe; die Kunst aber desto grisser."


one must make allowances for old age."28 As publisher, Mattheson now stood responsible for a text packed with invective. Heinrich Bokemeyer, for one, failed to appreciate Niedt's humor and stepped up to defend the honor of counterpoint, writing a letter to Mattheson in which he championed canon as the apex of musical achievement. At Bokemeyer's request, Mattheson printed the letter in "Die canonische Anatomie," interspersing his own responses. A second exchange followed, and the article was extended to four installments.29

In the dispute, Bokemeyer repeated the old claims for the exalted status of canon as an essential part of compositional training; it possessed "the very greatest use in music," and to master canon was to climb the art's highest peak.30 Since canon was the most difficult musical technique, argued Bokemeyer, it provided the "fundament" for success in all other genres, including fugue, imitation, double counterpoint, the church style, and even modern Italianate vocal music. Mattheson, in his response to Bokemeyer, took a more considered approach to canon than had Niedt: "To be sure I would want a successful program of music education in which this genre of composition [canon] is practiced to the extent that it is ap- plicable to other genres."3' But he went on to attack what he saw as the undue importance given to a procedure of little relevance to contemporary musical practice and one that prevented the invention of free-flowing and natural melody:

As soon as the ear notices that the composer has used more harmonic arti- ficialities than the melodious Natural, more fugal, canonic limitations and pedantic subtleties, than free, expressive modulations, it perceives a certain tiresome inclination, which deprives it of all pleasure and freedom, denying free rein to the affections.32

Throughout the article, Mattheson figures canon as a tyrant, a "powerful dictator" ("gewaltiger Dictatore"), who dominates his unquestioning,

28. Friederich Erhardt Niedt, Die musicalische Handleitung dritter und letzter Theil, ed. Johann Mattheson (Hamburg: Benjamin Schiller's heirs, 1717), preface, p. 27: "mancher alter ehrlicher Saalbader [hat] Zeit seines Lebens manche Stunde drauf angewandt / und darinn zu excelliren ... [Was] die Alten aus kindischer Einfalt noch vor gut hielten / gehet hin / denn dem Alter muS man was zu gut halten." Translation in F. E. Niedt, The Musical Guide, trans. Pamela L. Poulin and Irmgard C. Taylor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 250.

29. "Die canonische Anatomie," 236-368. 30. Bokemeyer, in ibid., 240-41: "den aller gr6ssesten Nutzen in musicis." 31. Bokemeyer, in ibid., 238: "Doch will ich einem Studioso melopoetico allerdings gera-

then haben / sich in diesem genere compositionis so viel zu uiben / als ihm / zur application auf anderegenera, n6thig seyn wird."

32. Mattheson, in ibid., 248-49: "So bald das Ohr merkt / daI3 der Verfasser mehr har- monische Kiinsteley / als melodi6ses Naturell / mehr fugenhaffte / canonische Einschrenkun- gen und pedantische Finessen / als ungezwungene expressive Modulirungen / angewandt hat / empfindet es eine gewisse / miihseelige Sympathie / die ihm alles Vergntigen und alle Freyheit benimmt / seine Affecten den Ztigel schiessen zu lassen."


"slavish" ("sclavisch") followers;33 he proudly claims that those long oppressed by this unjust order, the simple burghers Mr. Hearing and Mrs. Melody (Herr Auditus and Frau Melodica) have bravely begun a revolt against the ancient regime of strict counterpoint in an attempt "to throw off the yoke of august canon."34

As publisher of Critica musica, the journal in which "Die canonische Anatomie" appeared, Mattheson allotted himself unlimited space for de- tailed refutations of Bokemeyer's arguments and peppered his opponentes essays with his own withering footnotes. Bokemeyer was unable to withstand this relentless polemic, and Mattheson concluded "Die canonische Anatomie" with a final letter from Bokemeyer in which the defeated com- batant performs a complete reversal, retracting his former statement and repudiating the centrality of canon in contemporary musical practice. In- deed, Bokemeyer explains how, as a result of Mattheson's enlightening arguments, he has realized the marginal role of the art he had once espoused:

But now I (and undoubtedly many others with me) have the unanticipated good fortune to have been led by Your Honorable Sir to melody--and at the same time from the periphery to the center [of musical thought] - as the correct and only source of truly musical art. Accordingly, I think of my defeat as a great triumph over my previous ignorance in this respect, and I am not ashamed to acknowledge it publicly.35

In a letter to Mattheson written in 1725, two years after the publication of "Die canonische Anatomie," Bokemeyer was abject: "When I look at my old ideas I am filled with the greatest disgust.... The longer I look, the more [I believe] that the harmonic [i.e., contrapuntal] arts have up to now hindered the true goal [of music]."36

The argument between Mattheson and Bokemeyer in "Die canonische Anatomie" was anything but an arcane debate. As was his custom in such controversies, Mattheson solicited letters concerning the status of learned counterpoint from other leading musicians, and he received replies in support of his position from Georg Phillip Telemann, Johann David

33. Mattheson, in ibid., 341 and 247. 34. Mattheson, in ibid., 364: "das Joch des herrlichen Canonis abzuwerffen." 35. Bokemeyer, in ibid., 362: "Nun aber habe ich (und ohne Zweifel viele andere mit

mir) das unverhoffte Glhick / von Ihro Hoch-Edl. zu Melodie / als der einzigen und wahren Quelle recht-musicalischer Kunst / und gleisam a Peripheria ad Centrum, gefiihret zu werden. Demnach halte ich / beym Unterliegen / einen gewiinschten Triumph tiber meine bigherige Unwissenheit in diesem Sticke / und schlime mich nicht / solches hiemit auch 6ffentlich zu bekennen." Bokemeyer and Mattheson did have another go-round over theories of melody in later installments of the same journal. See "Der melodische Vorhof" in Mattheson, Critica Musica 2 (Hamburg: Thomas von Wiering's heirs, 1725), 289-380.

36. Bokemeyer to Mattheson, 18 June 1725, printed in Mattheson, CriticaMusica 2:294: "Wenn ich meine retroacta ansehe, so bekomme ich freylich den gr6ssesten Ekel .... Ich spire je langer je mehr, daf die harmonischen Kiinste bisher den rechten Zweck gehindert haben."


Heinichen, and Reinhard Keiser, all of which he printed at the end of "Die canonische Anatomie."37 The Gotha organist Gottfried Heinrich Stilzel

published his own treatise on canon in 1725 and in it acknowledged Mat- theson's arguments, hoping that his declared awareness of the dispute would be enough to protect him from "the suspicion" ("der Verdacht") that he believed canons to be the ultimate in musical accomplishment.38

Although Bokemeyer's defeat marked a key moment in the waning of canon's theoretical and practical status, learned counterpoint continued to serve as a favorite target for progressive music critics. Among the most vociferous was the Dresden Kapellmeister Heinichen, who, in his semi- nal treatise Der General-Bass in der Composition of 1728, likened learned

counterpoint to the worst superstitions of an irrational world. Heinichen

depicted enthusiasts of counterpoint as deceitful fanatics who wrapped canonic practice in a shroud of complexity, making bogus claims for its almost magical powers. Heinichen derided "the excessive cult of counterpoint" ("der excessive Cultus der Contrapuncte") and compared the making of canons to a kind of witchcraft.39 In typically enlightened fashion, Hein- ichen and Mattheson urged an intrepid encyclopedist to research, codify, and explain all the devices of learned counterpoint, thereby demystifying the discipline. Heinichen wrote:

Our music would certainly be well served by a capable man, who would, as far as possible, collect his own musical secrets as well as the others circulating around the world, ... diligently search for the key to puzzles to which he does not know the answer, and candidly elucidate all these musical concepts. Such [an undertaking] would greatly lessen the general wonderment at these kinds of paper witcheries and contain the abuses of excessive counterpoint, and we would learn to apply our musical reason to more important things.40

37. The letters are printed in "Die canonische Anatomie," 356-60. 38. Gottfried Heinrich St6lzel, Practischer Beweis wie aus einem nach dem wahren Funda-

mente solcher Noten-Kiinsteleyengesetzten Canone Perpetuo . . . Theils an Melodie, Theils auch nur an Harmonie . . zu machen seyn . . . (n.p.: the author, 1725), para. 44.

39. Johann David Heinichen, Der General-Bass in der Composition (Dresden: the author, 1728), 9 and 936.

40. Ibid., 936: "Es wiirde sich gewil ein capabler Mann um unsere Music hochverdient machen, wenn er so wohl seine eigene, als andere in der Welt herum vagirendeArcanaMusica ... so viel m6glich colligirte, den Schliissel zu den ihm noch unbekanten Arcanis mit Fleil suchete, und alle dergleichen Kunstgriffe der Musicalischen Welt auffrichtig entdeckete. Solches wiirde die allgemeine Verwunderung fiber dergleichen papierne Hexereyen sehr ver- mindern, den abusum fiberflfiiiger Contrapuncte hemmen, und unsere Musicalische Vernunfft auffwichtigere Dinge [appliciren lernen]." This connection of canon with witchcraft brings to mind Haydn's string quartet Op. 76, no. 2 (1797); the third movement is entitled "Hexen- menuette" and is a two-voice canon doubled at the octave. As for Heinichen's call for the enlightenment of strict counterpoint, Peter Cahn has argued that the Darmstadt Kapellmei- ster Christoph Graupner, who had studied with Heinichen, may have been inspired by this passage from his teacher's treatise; Graupner completed four books of canons (running to 5,625 numbers) in a rationalist attempt to list the vast combinatorial possibilities of a single theme. Cahn points out, however, that Graupner did not investigate complex canons in dim-


Without such research, canon would continue to flummox and fascinate

gullible musicians. In "Die canonische Anatomie," Mattheson insisted that "[a composer] must diligently reflect on this secret [canon] and investigate it, otherwise he gropes in the dark with all canons."41 Neither Mattheson nor Heinichen favored the complete abandonment of canon and double

counterpoint; rather they asserted that these techniques could no longer claim a privileged aesthetic position. Mattheson would later include chap- ters on both procedures in his Volikommener Capellmeister of 1739,42 and Heinichen acknowledged that "it is true, as good practical musicians now and then prove, that it is possible to combine counterpoint with good taste."43 Still, the hallowed position of learned counterpoint was seen by both men as the product of an irrational and antiquated musical culture

epitomized by, among others, Heinrich Bokemeyer. That Heinichen and especially Mattheson could expend so much of their

polemical energies on "enlightening" music theory bears witness to the per- sistent influence of the occult and magical in musical thought well into the

eighteenth century. This influence figures prominently in the theoretical

writings of Andreas Werckmeister, a frequent target of Mattheson's at-

tempts at rationalizing music theory. Pervasive in Werckmeister's work is the Neoplatonist notion that music replicates the layout of the heavens and can work its powerful effect on man because he, too, is a microcosm of the universe.44

These Neoplatonist ideas allowed Werckmeister to draw analogies between the cosmological order created by God and the motion of the voices in invertible counterpoint:

inution, augmentation, and the like, research which seems also to have been part of Hein- ichen's recommended program. See Peter Cahn, "Christoph Graupners 'Kanons' als Versuch einer systematischen Imitationslehre," Musiktheorie 1 (1986): 130-36. For a thorough de-

scription of the complex canons as well (a modem answer, perhaps, to Heinichen's request), see Denis Collins, Canon in Music Theory from c. 1550 to c. 1800 (Ph.D. diss., Stanford Uni-

versity, 1992). Collins discusses canon in seventeenth-century German theory on pages 168- 74, invertible counterpoint and canon on pages 266-87.

41. Mattheson, in "Die canonische Anatomie," 264: "[ein Melopoeta] muf ... diesem

Geheimnii fleifig nachsinnen / und solches erforschen; sonst tappet er im Finstern mit allen Canonen."

42. Johann Mattheson, Der vollkommene Capellmeister (Hamburg: Christoph Herdol, 1739; reprint, Kassel: Birenreiter, 1954), 387-427. For Mattheson's discussion of canons that were in fact pleasing to the ear, see esp. pp. 397-497.

43. Heinichen, Der General-Bass, 9, note b: "wahr ist es, es weisen dann und wann gut Practici, daB es m6glich sey, die Contrapuncte mit dem Gout zu vereinigen."

44. One of Werckmeister's most widely cited and influential efforts in disseminating these Neoplatonist ideas was his Musicalisches Send-schreiben (Quedlinburg: G. E. Struntz, 1699; reprint, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1970), a translation of Agostino Steffani's Quanta Certezza Habbia da suoiprincipii la Musica, which had appeared in Amsterdam in 1695. Stef- fani was Kapellmeister at Hanover during the first part of Leibniz's tenure there as court librarian from 1676 until his death in 1716.


The heavens are now revolving and circulating steadily so that one (body) now goes up but in another time it changes again and comes down. This circulation is therefore to be found in and on the earth and also in microcosm in man. As the philosophers say, high is low and low is high. We also have these mirrors of heaven and nature in musical harmony, because a certain voice can be the highest voice, but can become the lowest or middle voice, and the lowest and middle can again become the highest. One voice can become all other voices and no other voice must be added, and at least four voices can be transformed in different ways in good harmony.45

For Werckmeister, canon and double counterpoint provided a profound insight into the mysterious, hidden structure of the universe, since by analogy with the motion of the stars, these types of pieces reached perfection in their "harmonic inversion" ("Replica") and therefore offered "a mirror of nature and God's order" ("ein Spiegel der Natur und Ordnung Gottes") .46

In the Musicae mathematicae hodegus curiosus of 1687, Werckmeister ex-

plained how his method of fabricating canons is based on the principle of contrary motion, and that this scheme is derived from the fundamental properties of the monochord, whose division into intervals reflects the or-

dering of the cosmos.47 His investigations into the nature of counterpoint were not merely for the practical benefit of musicians; more than that, they revealed both the ethical and the occult workings of music. There was for Werckmeister "something secret and of much good" ("etwas geheimes und viel gutes")48 hidden in the astronomical principles which themselves provided "the key to all kinds of canons and double, triple, and quadruple

45. Werckmeister, Harmonologia musica, v: "Wie nun der Himmel in steter revolution und Circulation stehet / da dasjenige / was itzo oben gehet / eine andere Zeit wieder verindert wird und unten k6mt / also ist solche Circulation in und an der Erdkugel: auch an dem Menschen als Microcosmo zu finden: daher die Philosophi zu sagen pflegen; Superius est inferius, c& inferius est superius. Diesen Himmels- und Natur-Spiegel haben wir auch in der Musicalischen harmonia, denn diejenige Stimme so da oben gehet / kann wieder die unterste und mittelere werden / und die untersten und mitleren k6nnen wieder die oberen werden / also daf3 eine Stimme alle Stimmen werden kan / und keine andere Stimme dazu oder davon k6mt / und doch zum wenigsten 4. Stimmen ... mit einander in guter harmonia verwechselt werden."

46. Ibid., 101. Werckmeister gives an example of such a "mirror of heaven" in the initial treatment of invertible counterpoint in the Harmonologia musica, where he includes a four-part setting of the chorale Vater unser im Himmelreich within a framework of invertible counter-

point at the octave and twelfth, presenting no fewer than ten of the possible permutations; he does not conclude the piece but simply writes "and so on" (u.s.w.), suggesting that these combinations could be continued indefinitely. The constant motion of the heavens -of God's

"Kingdom of Heaven" (Himmelreich) -is thus allegorized by the perpetual revolution of the

parts which, following Werckmeister's earlier description, depict the motion of the planets. See ibid., 90-93.

47. Andreas Werckmeister, Musicae mathematicae hodegus curiosus (Frankfurt: Theodor

Philipp Calvisius, 1687; reprint, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1972), 108, 137-38. 48. Werckmeister, Harmonologia musica, 82.


counterpoint" ("ist also der Schhissel zu allerhand Arten von den Canon- ibus und gedoppelten 3. und 4. fachen Contrapuncto").49

Although Werckmeister preferred to invoke Christian scripture in support of his Neoplatonist views on music's sympathy with the cosmological order, he also adduced the writings of occult authors, most notably the early sixteenth-century Hermetic doctor and medical reformer Paracelsus and his contemporary Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, whose De occulta philosophia (Cologne, 1533) circulated widely among theorists into the eighteenth century.50 A believer in the efficacy of natural magic, Werckmeister had read the other great Renaissance magi as well-Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, and Giordano Bruno -and his views on music owe much to the Hermetic tradition.5s For the Renaissance magus, and the seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century musicians who shared many of Werckmeister's views, the world was ordered hierarchically, and the composer could both exploit music's sympathy with the higher powers in the universe and gain greater understanding of the world structure through music itself.52

No one knew better--and resented more deeply--the pervasiveness of the occult in musical thought than Mattheson. In the opening pages of his first book, Das neu-erdffzete Orchestre of 1713, he had attacked not only the pedantry of music theory but also its reliance on obscure mystical ideas inherited from antiquity and the Renaissance.53 To illustrate the tenacity of what he considered to be a network of irrational and counterproductive

49. Ibid., 102. 50. Werckmeister, Musicalische Paradoxal-Discourse (Quedlinburg: T. P. Calvisius, 1707;

reprint, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1970), 12, 21-22. Walther, and probably Bokemeyer as well, owned works by Paracelsus. Walther to Bokemeyer, 3 October 1728, Walther Briefe, 65-90. Walther mentions other writings of Paracelsus in a letter to Bokemeyer of 3 August 1729, Walther Briefe, 138-46.

51. Werckmeister, Musicalische Paradoxal-Discourse, 21. For Werckmeister's sources see Rolf Damman, "Zur Musiklehre des Andreas Werckmeister," in Archivfiir Musikwissenschaft 11 (1954): 206-37.

52. See Gary Tomlinson, Music in Renaissance Magic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), esp. 45-46.

53. A similar suspicion of the occult can be found in seventeenth-century writings on music theory. Michael Praetorius's De Organographia begins with a wonderfully ironic attack on those who had criticized him for publishing a scholarly book in German instead of Latin, in which the author satirizes such high-minded secrecy with a disparaging comparison between the hoarding of musical and alchemical knowledge, sardonically pleading that his book should not be thought of as "a great Philosopher's Stone, which the authors of Secret Phi- losophy hold to be such a mystery" ("magisterium Lapidis Philosophici, welches Secretioris- Philosophiae Authores vor ein sonderlich Mysterium halten wollen"). Praetorius, Syntagma musicum, vol. 2, De Organographia (Wolfenbiittel: the author, 1619; facs. reprint, Kassel: Birenreiter, 1958), 5. Similarly, in Der musicalische Quacksalber, Heinichen's teacher, Johann Kuhnau, ridicules his novel's main character, the musical charlatan Caraffa, by comparing him to an alchemist who loudly proclaims his discovery of the philosophers' stone, but has nonetheless failed to produce any gold. Kuhnau, Der musicalische Quacksalber (Dresden: Johann Christoph Mieth, 1700; facs. ed., Bern: Peter Lang, 1992), chap. 36.


beliefs, Mattheson describes how he lent a copy of Musurgia universalis (Rome, 1650) by the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher to a man who, on return- ing the volume, recounted how he had conjured up a ghost while reading through the book. Mattheson relates how the man cited Agrippa and one or another writer on magic ("Zauber-Autore") as proof that such a thing could happen.54 The fervent Neoplatonist Heinrich Buttstedt objected to this seemingly casual, but in fact breathtaking, assault on the venerable Kircher.55 Mattheson responded by comparing the occult teachings found in the "magic books" of Agrippa, Kircher, and others to the words of barbarians, and alleged that the "highly praised learning of the otherwise industrious Jesuit [Kircher]" ("hochgeriihmte Gelehrsahmkeit unsers sonst fleifigen Jesuiten") was full of "mediocre ideas" ("mittelm~ifige Ge- dancken").56 That Mattheson would begin Das neu-erJffnete Orchestre with an attack on Kircher and the nimbus of magic that surrounded music theory speaks to both the popularity of these beliefs and Mattheson's commitment to eradicating them.57

In his writings on music, Heinrich Bokemeyer often described canon and its companion, double counterpoint, using Hermetic concepts and language. In 1722, probably the same year in which he wrote his first letter to Johann Mattheson in defense of canon, Bokemeyer added a title page and short preface to his personal copy of Johann Theile's Grtindlicher Unterricht von dengedoppelten Contrapuncten. Here Bokemeyer describes the hoarding of contrapuntal knowledge deplored by Mattheson and Heinichen:

54. Mattheson, Das neu-erdiffnete Orchestre (Hamburg: the author, 1713), 5. Kircher himself was a leading writer on Hermetic and occult philosophy. See Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964), 416-23; and idem, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972), 230.

55. Heinrich Buttstedt, Ut, mi, sol, re, fa, la, tota musica et harmonia aeterna (Erfurt: Otto Friedrich Werther, [1716]), 8. Among the many occult beliefs found in the book is Buttstedt's claim that music has medical powers to heal sickness (pp. 15-16). For antecedents in Re- naissance magic see Tomlinson, Music in Renaissance Magic, 84-85, 131-32.

56. Mattheson, Das beschtftzte Orchestre, 49. In the introduction to Das neu-eroffnete Or- chestre, Mattheson also reduced the motion of the constellations to a mere analogy for change in musical style (pp. 3-4). For a formulation of the direct effect of the stars on musical style see Werckmeister, Musicalische Paradoxal-Discourse, 26-27.

57. Buttstedt was one of Walther's teachers, and in one of his letters to Bokemeyer, Walther draws a less than complimentary picture of his pedagogical methods. Walter describes both Buttstedt's occult methods for aiding musical invention and his hoarding of contrapuntal knowledge. Buttstedt forced his student to pay twelve Thalers - six up front--to see a treatise on double counterpoint. Buttstedt would then stand over Walther, allowing him to copy only a few lines of the book at a time. Finally, Walther bribed Buttstedt's son to sneak him the treatise, which he copied in its entirety in one night. Walther to Bokemeyer, 3 Oc- tober 1729, WaltherBriefe, 65-83, esp. 68-69. These were precisely the kind of mystical and opportunistic pedagogical methods Mattheson railed against. (The treatise Walther copied was Johann Theile's Grstndlicher Unterricht von den gedoppelten Contrapuncten. See Schtine- mann, "J. G. Walther and H. Bokemeyer," 90.)


This treatise on double counterpoint is to be treasured as more precious than a great deal of gold. Therefore one must not throw such things before swine so that the secrets of music become common and consequently a thing of disdain. But worthy enthusiasts are properly fortified, even at no cost, thus satisfying their great curiosity, and allowing them to strive for the peak of noble music.58

Bokemeyer's seemingly extravagant claim that these contrapuntal teachings should be more highly prized than precious metal parallels and is informed by his desire as an alchemist to fabricate something more valuable than ordinary (i.e., inactive) gold, such as that described by the Weimar Kunst-Kfimmerer in his conversation with Walther. Bokemeyer's preface to Theile's treatise reads like a gloss on a paradigmatic passage from the widely disseminated alchemy treatise Splendor Solis, surely known to the Wolfen- biittel Kantor; the book was first published in 1598 and reappeared in a beautifully engraved Hamburg edition of 1708: "Hence it is clearly to be understood that the Gold of the Philosophers is something other than common gold."59 In Bokemeyer's view the "secrets" of counterpoint, like the coveted precepts of alchemy, must be guarded by their committed practitioners, who sought not financial but "philosophical" gain--spiritual rewards more valuable than earthly riches. Indeed, members of the contrapuntal fraternity had no illusions about accruing wealth through their studies. Heinrich Buttstedt described with some bitterness the tension between the intellectual demands of counterpoint and the financial rewards of more popular and accessible music, such as that championed by Mat- theson: "Which musician devotes himself to double counterpoint ... ? Very few. Why? It is too difficult and does not pay. Therefore it happens that instead of the true essence, one manages only with trinkets [i.e., dance pieces (Galanterien)]."60 Johann Valentin Meder, the K6nigsberg

58. Heinrich Bokemeyer, preface to Johann Theile, Grindlicher Unterricht von dengedoppelten Contrapuncten, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Mus. ms. theor. 917, pt. 1: "Dieser Aufsatz von den gedoppelten Contrapuncten ist kostbarer als viel Gold zu schditzen. Dannenhero mufi man solchen nicht ftir die Sdiue werfen, damit die Geheimnile der Musik nicht gemein, und also verichtlich werden. Den wiirdigen Liebhabern aber sind dergleichen billig, auch ohne Entgeld, communioret, darum ihren grofen Lern-begierde erhalten und dem Gipfel der edlen Music nach zu trachten."

59. [Salomon Trisomsin], Splendor Solis, in Erdffnete Geheimnisse, 163-213, esp. 210: "Hierau1 ist klarlich zu verstehen / daB das Goldt der Philosophen ein anders / dann das ge- meyne Goldt / [ist]." Translated by Joscelyn Godwin in Magnum Opus Hermetic Sourceworks, vol. 8 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Phanes Press, 1981), 74. Splendor Solis is ascribed to Salomon Trisomsin, who is purported to have been the "Preceptor of Paracelsus."

60. Buttstedt, Ut, mi, sol, re, fa, la, tota musica et harmonia aeterna, 9: "Welcher Musicus gibt sich an die doppelten Contrapuncte ... die wenigsten. Warum? es geht schwer ein, und wird nicht bezahlet. Daher kommt es daB man sich statt des rechten Wesens nur mit Ga- lanterien behilft." "True essence" is also a stock alchemical phrase. For a typical passage that uses this language, see the anonymous poem De prima materia lapidis philosophorum (On the Prime Matter of the Philosophers' Stone), in

Er'ffnete Geheimnisse, 360-70, esp. 363. For


Kapellmeister and onetime student of learned music, also commented that

contrapuntal study "doesn't put food on the table" ("bringe kein Brodt"), citing this as one of the reasons he had given up the discipline.61

In one of his letters to Bokemeyer, Walther noted that the extraordinary substances used to effect alchemical transformations could only be fabricated by those with the requisite moral fortitude and expert knowledge; the "true philosophical material" ("die wahre materia philosophica"), like a work of double counterpoint, "is nowhere to be bought, but must first be

prepared through artifice."62 This "true philosophical material," contrived

by the alchemist and added to quantities of imperfect metals in order to transform them into gold, is the philosophers' stone. It was not a readily available physical substance that could be bought and sold, nor was its an-

alogue, learned counterpoint, a common musical material that should be

freely disseminated. Bokemeyer's concern for the careful protection of

contrapuntal secrets articulates a moral stance found throughout the alchemical literature, here summarized by Carl Jung: "On the one hand the alchemist declares that he is concealing the truth intentionally, so as to pre- vent wicked or stupid people from gaining possession of the gold and thus precipitating a catastrophe. But, on the other hand, the same author will assure us that the gold he is seeking is not-as the stupid suppose-the ordinary gold, it is the philosophical gold."63 Counterpoint, too, was powerful stuff, to be handled with care.

Many of Bokemeyer's arguments and analogies in "Die canonische Anatomie" have a thinly veiled Hermetic subtext, and throughout the article Bokemeyer's interest in occult science comes clearly into relief, as when he describes the labors of the contrapuntist as he would an alchemist

working in his laboratory. Referring to a metaphorical workshop of learned counterpoint, he writes that those who "have the luck to fabricate in this secret laboratory of Minerva [i.e., invention]" ("[das Glick haben] so in diesem geheimen Kunst-Zimmer der Minerva zu zimmern") will, through the elaboration of canons, necessarily discover all the possible inversions allowed by these pieces and therefore gain a solid grounding in

Walther's account of his tuition with Buttstedt, see Walther to Bokemeyer, 3 October 1729, Walther Briefe, 65-83, esp. 67-69.

61. Meder's biographical account appears in Mattheson, Grundlage einer Ehrenpforte (Hamburg, 1740), ed. Max Schneider (Berlin: Kommissionsverlag von Leo Liepmannssohn, 1910), 218-23, esp. 219. Similarly, Beer describes the views of practical musicians who claim that double counterpoint ("gedoppelter contrapunct") "neither pleases the ear" ("[mache kein] angenehmes Gehar") nor "puts bread on the table" ("[trfige] kein Brod ins Haus") (Musikalische Diskurse, 96).

62. Walther to Bokemeyer, 3 October 1729, WaltherBriefe, 77: "nirgend zu kauffen ist, sondern erstlich durch Kunst praepariret werden mu&."

63. C. G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, trans. R. F. C. Hull (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953), 232.


double counterpoint.64 Fabrication (zimmern), Kunst-Zimmer, indeed a "secret laboratory," are certainly suggestive of the discourse of alchemy. In another passage, Bokemeyer refers to the contrapuntist as an "artifex," a Latin word that includes "alchemist" as one of its meanings; this is not just an "artist" but an artificer, one who works in the laboratory trying to fabricate gold.65 Elsewhere in "Die canonische Anatomie," Bokemeyer calls learned counterpoint "a secret art" ("eine heimliche Kunst"), a pervasive reference to alchemy.66 His description of the untiring contrapuntist la- boring in his isolated laboratory brings to mind the famous image from Heinrich Khunrath's Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae, printed in 1604 (see Fig. 1). The task of alchemist and contrapuntist was a solitary one that required unfailing dedication; their disciplines demanded "unrelenting toil and diligence" ("unverdrofiene / Mfihe und Fleifi") on the part of the artifex.67 Both arts relied on secrecy and required a profound technical knowledge of complex procedures in the search for not only physical results but spiritual edification.

These clear references to alchemy parallel more basic influences found throughout Bokemeyer's discussion; his arguments for canon derive from the Hermetic view of art and artifex. According to Bokemeyer, the goal of the artifex was to master the most demanding and complex procedure-- canon in the case of the contrapuntist, and fabrication of the philosophers' stone in the case of the alchemist. He asserted that fugue, imitation, and even modern concerted vocal music all derived ultimately from canon, and that without a knowledge of learned counterpoint one could not suc- ceed in the more common, and practically important, genres of modern music; therefore "canons, from which these [other genres] flow, have the greatest use in music.""68 Here Bokemeyer was in agreement with the Her- metic enthusiast Buttstedt, who used alchemical language to describe learned counterpoint, finding in it the "true essence" of all other musical forms.

64. Bokemeyer, in "Die canonische Anatomie," 351. 65. Ibid., 301. For the use of the term artifex see, for example, Theatrum chemicum, 6 vols.

(Strasbourg: L. Zetzner, 1622-61), 5:160: "[Vas] oportet esse rotundae figurae: Ut sit artifex huius (aperis) mutator firmament" ("[The vessel] must be round in shape, so that the

artifex may be the transformer of the firmament"). Translated in C. G. Jung, Alchemical Stud- ies, trans. R. F. C. Hall (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 88.

66. Bokemeyer, in "Die canonische Anatomie," 316. For an example of references to alchemy as a secret art see "Liber Secretorum Ioannis de Padua" in Erdffnete Geheimnisse, 409.

67. Johann Theile, Musicalisches Kunstbuch, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Mus. ms. theor. 913, fol. Ir. "Vorrede" to Valentinus, Chymische Schrifften (Hamburg: Gottfried Liebezeit, 1700).

68. Bokemeyer, in "Die canonische Anatomie," 240-41: "die Canones, woher solche fliessen / den allergr6ssesten Nutzen in musicis haben." Bokemeyer had, of course, done a great deal of composing as a professional musician before he was initiated into the contrapuntal arts at the age of twenty-seven under the tutelage of Georg Osterreich.


::::i::::: aiii-'i'X i:~iiiiiiii~::iiiiiiii~i-:-~i:--:-- ::low-:----

All-::::--::::::::: 'i~:'i'-'-_':-~i--i_: ir vM MIM?-:~:-:ii':'iii- :::::_~iji i pwi:i:i?:-'?iii~:::i: MI,:li::::~~~:ii"ii~i

Z?siiH z w Vil ::ii:-:-l?,i--:::.:::i :-

-^am W ::::;::::::: xii~i:r-i~:::i a:: ::i-::;:?ii'iil-~i:i ?

q::i-:l:-:::::: :::':-ii;a--_::_:::: ::

Figure 1 Heinrich Conrad Khunrath, Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae solius verae, Christiano-kabalisticum, divino-magicum . . . Tertriunum, Catholicon (Hanau, 1609). Divi- sion of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

One celebrated alchemical text was the short exposition of principles known as the "Emerald Table" or Tabula Smaragdina, a list reprinted frequently in treatises and known to all alchemists, including Walther and Bokemeyer.69 The second sentence of the table intimated, in the mystifying language of many Hermetic texts, that all the forms of matter originated from one source: "As all things were by the contemplation of one, so all

things arose from this one thing by a single act of adaptation."70 This con- cept of interrelatedness, derived from the Aristotelian theory of matter, was the basis for the entire enterprise of alchemy. Aristotle argued that the most basic substance of the universe was the prima materia, which gained a real,

69. Walther to Bokemeyer, 3 October 1729, Walther Briefe, 65-83, esp. 77. 70. Er'ffnete Geheimnisse, 336: "Et sicut omnes res fuerunt ab UNO, meditatione unius,

sic omnes res natae fuerunt ab hac una re adoptione." Translated in Holmyard, Alchemy, 95.


material existence when it was "formed," and which yielded the four elements of fire, air, water, and earth. Since all substances were composed of differing quantities of these four basic elements, the trick of alchemy was simply to change the proportions of a lower metal--lead, for example--to accord with those of gold, thereby transforming the common into the precious. This was not simply a chemical reaction; it was possible because matter was itself alive and, given the proper impetus, could transmute from one substance to another. This transformation was effected by the philosophers' stone, which could be added to the base metals (the amount of metal that could be so changed varied in different accounts) in order to create gold.71

Attending this theory of matter was the alchemical metaphor of the spring, which encapsulated the notion that all substances were born from a single, living source and were thus united by their origins. In the treatise "Vom grossen Stein der uhralten Weisen" by the well-known author Ba- silius Valentinus, it is the spirit mercury whose penetrating power provides the active ingredient in alchemical transformations: "From the spirit of mercury all art flows and has its beginning."72 In Bokemeyer's hierarchical view of music, all genres and techniques, from imitation and fugue to con- certos, had a single origin: "Canons are the original source from which all these kinds of artistic works flow."73

According to Bokemeyer, even the most perfect melodies (the focus of Mattheson's aesthetic of naturalness) derived from this one true essence, and late in his dispute with Mattheson he introduced a new category, the canon naturalis, which "flows directly from melody" ("unmittelbar aus der Melodie fliesset").74 Bokemeyer argued that "natural canons have their primordial beauty, and artificial canons flow immediately from this, as from their source. . . . Indeed, simple, natural melody has the canon as its rule, otherwise its beauty would have no basis."'T By deriving the canon

71. See Holmyard, Alchemy, 19-22. This theory of matter is articulated mainly in Aris- totle's De Generatione et Corruptione and Meteorologica, book 4. In many alchemical tracts the

materiaprima is equated with the philosophers' stone, as in Deprima materia lapidisphilosopho- rum, in ErdJfnete Geheimnisse, 360-70. See also Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, 222, 273.

72. Basilius Valentinus, "Vom grossen Stein der uhralten Weisen," in Chymische Schrifften, pt. 2, p. 243: "aus dem Spiritu Mercurii alle Kunst ihren Anfang hat und herfleust." Walther owned a copy of this work. See Walther to Bokemeyer, 3 October 1729, Walther Briefe, 65-83, esp. 77.

73. Bokemeyer, in "Die canonische Anatomie," 329: "die Canones die urspriingliche Quelle seyn / woher aller dergleichen artificia fliessen."

74. Bokemeyer, in ibid., 290. Later in the article Mattheson dismisses the canon naturalis as a nonentity ("Canon naturalis ist ein non ens") ("Die canonische Anatomie," 336).

75. Bokemeyer, in ibid., 315: "Die Canones naturales haben ihre urspriingliche Sch6nheit/ und die Canones artificiales fliessen immediate daraus / als aus ihrem Grunde / her ... .Ja / die simple, nattirliche Melodey hat selbst den Canonem pro norma, sonst hitte ihre Schonheit keinen Grund." Mattheson quickly noted the circularity of this argument: "Herr Bokemeyer himself acknowledges that melody is the source of canon. My God! How can he then say that canon is a requirement of melody?" ("Der Herr Bokemeyer gestehet ja selbst ...


artificialis from the canon naturalis, Bokemeyer attempted to link the most

complex contrapuntal procedure with the most pleasing natural melody. And he went even further: "Thus no melody is to be valued as perfectly artful, but that one which can yield an artificial canon."76 In this curiously circular argument, Bokemeyer asserted that the best canons derive from the most natural melodies, and the best melodies are those that can be molded into finely wrought canons. Just as alchemy required untainted raw materials, so, too, in Bokemeyer's view, the fact that a melody could yield a canon proved its original purity.

For Bokemeyer it was the artifex, the mediator between the natural and the artificial, who could "find" the canon naturalis and from it produce the

highest prize of musical erudition, the canon artificialis. The artifex uses his skill and knowledge of "the secret art" ("die heimliche Kunst") of learned

counterpoint to mold beautiful compositions from raw, undisturbed nature.77 One of the basic tenets of alchemy was the notion that nature alone could not achieve perfection, that base metals could not be transformed into gold without the intervention of the alchemist, that "art is a helper of nature."78 The task of the artifex was to encourage nature in this path toward perfection; typical is the promise made by one Hermetic treatise to show "how, through the help of art, nature is to be brought to perfection."79 Without the skillful intervention of the K;instler, in music as in

alchemy, nature remains an undifferentiated mass. Following his alchemical model, Bokemeyer argued that "the perfection of nature would not be recognized were it not brought to light by the investigations of art."s80 Al- though the Kfinstler molds nature he must remain true to it: "The Kfinstler must imitate nature, and the imitation of nature is the goal of all arts.... The more similar then a work of art is to nature, the more perfect it is.8"s

die Melodie sey die Quelle der Canonum. Mein Gott! wie kann er denn sagen / der Canon sey eine norma Melodiae?") (Mattheson, in ibid., 315).

76. Bokemeyer, in ibid., 337: "So ist keine Melodie fiir vollkommen kiinstlich zu

schitzen / als deren einzele membra canones artificiales abgeben k6nnen." As usual Mattheson

responds in a footnote stressing the priority of nature over art, objecting to Bokemeyer's combination of kuinstlich and natural melody: "Not the artful, but the beautiful, pleasant melody is that which is sought" ("Nicht die kiinstliche; sondern die sch6ne / angenehme Melodie ist es / welche gesucht wird") (Mattheson, in ibid., 337).

77. Bokemeyer, in ibid., 316-17. Bokemeyer is here claiming that secret art can add to natural melody.

78. Eriffniete Geheimnisse, 591: "Die Kunst ein Gehilffin sey der Natur." 79. Ibid., 501: "wie durch dieser Kunst Hiilff die Naturen zu der vollkommenheit zu

bringen seyen." 80. Bokemeyer, in "Die canonische Anatomie," 331: "Die Vollkommenheit der Nature

wiirde nicht erkannt / wo die / durch das Nachspiiren der Kunst / nicht zum Vorschein ge- bracht wiirde."

81. Bokemeyer, in ibid., 332: "Der Kiinstler [mufi] die Natur imitiren / und imitatio Nat- urae ist der Zweck in alien Kiinsten. ... Je dihnlicher nun ein Kunst-Werk der Natur ist / desto vollkommener ist es."


This view of nature and art informed much contemporary alchemical literature: "Art is and shall be a follower of nature, for no art is valid that does not have nature before it."82

Throughout "Die canonische Anatomie," Bokemeyer's description of the role of the contrapuntal artificer is virtually identical with that of the alchemist: "So through the investigation of art, one discovers, by virtue of the accompanying understanding of the artist, the traces of Nature where-

upon she [Nature] rushes-by step not by leap-toward perfection."83 This is a perfect description of one of the plates from Atalanta fugiens (1618), a collection of fifty musical canons on alchemical texts by the early seventeenth-century alchemist and composer Michael Maier (see Fig. 2).84 The book appeared in a German edition entitled Chymisches Cabinet, published in Frankfurt in 1708, and may well have been owned by Boke-

meyer.85 The engraving depicts Nature walking, not leaping, toward perfection, with the alchemist following behind and carrying a lantern that shines with the metaphorical light of his understanding. The first part of Maier's motto echoes Bokemeyer's description of the contrapuntist. Maier's epigram begins: "Nature be your guide; whom you must follow from afar/ Willingly, otherwise you err, where she does not lead you/ Reason be your staff" (Fig. 2). The laws of Nature applied equally to

alchemy and counterpoint, and the role of the artifex in both secret

disciplines was essentially homologous. Bokemeyer practiced learned

counterpoint with the same set of assumptions he brought to his Hermetic

investigations, ever seeking the path toward perfection. When Mattheson engaged Bokemeyer in "Die canonische Anatomie," it

would have been easy for the Hamburg critic to guess that his opponent's defense of canon was built on an elaborate, if concealed, web of occult ideas. Mattheson had been fighting against such beliefs for at least a decade. After Bokemeyer had conceded defeat, Mattheson insisted, in the final

pages of the article, that all contrapuntists should have to provide explanations for the metaphors of unity (canon as the peak, the source, and the fundament), ones that would be able to withstand--and here he deploys his own metaphors of enlightenment--the obvious truth ("Sonnenklare Wahrheit") manifested in the prevailing forms of musical expression, many

82. Er'ffnete Geheimnisse, 590: "die Kunst ein nachfolgerin der Natur ist und seyn soil / denn es gilt kein Kunst / wo nit die natur zuvor da ist."

83. Bokemeyer, in "Die canonische Anatomie," 331: "Doch gerith man durch das For- schen der Kunst / verm6ge des sie begleitenden Verstandes eines Kiinstlers / .. . auf die

Spuren der Natur / worauf sie /pergradus, nicht aberper saltum, zur Vollkommenheit eilet." See also Valentinus, "De liquore metallorum aethereo," in Chymische Schrjffren, pt. 2, p. 69.

84. Michael Maier, Atalanta fugiens (Oppenheim: Hieronymus Galler, 1618); English edition translated and edited by Joscelyn Godwin in Magnum Opus Hermetic Sourceworks, vol. 22 (1989). See also Christoph Meinel, "Alchemie und Musik," in Die Alchemie in der euro-

piischen Kultur- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte, ed. Meinel (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1986), 201-27.

85. Michael Maier, Chymisches Cabinet (Frankfurt: Georg Heinrich Oehrling, 1708).


EM nt~ .nt X LI . Deficrct;s N4atmr. 77 In Chymicis verfanti Natura, Ratio,Experientia & le&io,

fint Dux,fcipio,perfpicilia & lampas.

VA

?:,Mwm

me. Z

EPIGRAMMA XLII.

D Ux

Naturatibitx'queartepedifflquiusilli JEfo lubens,erras:ni comes ipfa vi eft.

Det ratioffp ionais oper, Experientia fjrmet Lumina,quepojjf4 cernere pa/a procul.

Lci/io/it lampaI w tenebris di/ucidarerumrT rebortimqu3'irucsprovidM uat caTr0.6r. Z C,

Figure 2 Michael Maier, Atalantafugiens (Oppenheim, 1618). By permission of the British Library. Shelf-mark 90.i.19.


of them concerned more with melody than with harmonic complexity. How is it, he asks, that canon can claim a "special-influence" ("Special- Influenz") or be considered the "quintessence" ("Quint-Essenz") of composition?86 These can be read not only as direct references to Bokemeyer's arguments, but as questions addressing the hidden powers of complex music and the Hermetic traditions that informed them.

The intricate network of beliefs that pervaded the alchemical and contrapuntal ideology articulated by Bokemeyer, and was cherished by many of his contemporaries, may well have been in Mattheson's mind when he chose the title "Die canonische Anatomie." For readers such as Bokemeyer, Buttstedt, and other devotees of Hermeticism, Mattheson's choice of the anatomical metaphor was significant; many of these men not only must have continued to believe in the magical, healing powers of music, but would have been familiar with the strictures of Hermetic medicine against dissection of the human body.87 Further, to imply, as the title "Die canonische Anatomie" seemed to do, that dissection could answer all questions about the inner workings of music was to discount the relevance of the hidden effects of the stars (and, by inference, to challenge the notion that man was a microcosm of the universe), as well as to disentangle the practice of counterpoint from the great web of resemblances, which, as Bokemeyer wrote in "Die canonische Anatomie," allowed the infinite canon to serve as a metaphor for "the eternal harmony" ("die alle Ewigkeit bestehenden Harmonie") of the cosmos.88

Bokemeyer's fellow contrapuntists might have sensed that Mattheson's polemic was meant to be a kind of rational dissection of canon, a careful, well-lighted examination that would expose learned counterpoint's meta- physical underpinnings as a dangerous illusion. The enlightened scientist would draw back the shroud of secrecy and cut into the corpse of canon, demystifying the strange creature once and for all. For the followers of the Paracelsan tradition, dissection threatened to exclude the spiritual element from any viable investigation into the phenomenal world. Eighteenth- century devotees of Hermetic science would have known that for "anato- mists" such as Mattheson, occult explanations were inimical to truth; to embrace anatomy was to assume that no causes were hidden, and that the body, and by extension the universe, could be understood on a purely physical level, without the aid of magical insight.89

86. Mattheson, in "Die canonische Anatomie," 364. 87. Lois N. Magner, A History ofMedicine (New York: Marcel Dekker, 1992), 168. See

also Walter Pagel, Paracelus (Basel: Karger, 1958), 49. For Walther's citations of works by Paracelsus in letters to Bokemeyer see Walther Briefe, 77, 143.

88. Bokemeyer, in "Die canonische Anatomie," 342-43. In a typical rejection of such allegorical thinking, Mattheson argued that canon had no special claims in this regard since thousands of other things remind us of eternity (Mattheson, in ibid., 343, note o).

89. But in a flippant epilogue to "Die canonische Anatomie," Mattheson suddenly turns the tables on rationalists as well, satirizing those who "maintain that anatomy is the be all and


By 1724 Bokemeyer had publicly renounced his claims for canon, though he continued to cultivate it along with its parallel discipline, al-

chemy, and was especially interested in a manuscript in Walther's possession, Johann Theile'sMusicalisches Kunstbuch. Theile was one of the leading musicians of his day: a founding member and first Kapellmeister of the

Hamburg opera, friend of Dietrich Buxtehude and Johann Adam Reinken, praised by Christoph Bernhard, and for three generations the most famous German teacher of counterpoint, hailed as "the father of contrapuntists" ("der Vater der Contrapunctisten").90

Walther first mentioned his ownership of Theile's Kunstbuch to Boke- meyer in a letter of August 1731, which, incidentally, includes an extended discussion of alchemy.91 Walther made a copy of the Kunstbuch and sent it to Bokemeyer in installments between 1735 and 1738, a period in which the latter was still troubled by his defeat in the pages of "Die canonische Anatomie."92 In 1737 Bokemeyer even added an annotation to the above- mentioned introduction to his personal copy of Theile's Griindlicher Un- terricht von den gedoppelten Contrapuncten renouncing his former views: "I proffered this altogether too severe view fifteen years ago, when I was prej- udiced in favor of the harmonic art."93 Despite this uncertainty tinged with shame, Bokemeyer was eager to augment his already substantial collection of counterpoint manuscripts.

When he received the Kunstbuch, Bokemeyer had already made copies of three of Theile's other counterpoint treatises for his collection and had received two more manuscripts by Theile from his teacher Georg Oster- reich.94 Osterreich had studied in Hamburg in the 1680s with both Theile and Johann Philipp F6rtsch, another leading contrapuntist and student of

end all of medical science" ("behaupten / die Anatomie sey der letzte Endzweck aller medici- nischen Wissenschafft"), and claiming that the discipline rarely saves the sick from their illness or the doctor from his ignorance. He then argues that most people would rather content themselves with a kind of easy knowledge that concerns itself only "with surface features" ("mit der iusersten Fliche") than undertake extensive investigations that ultimately prove of little or no use. This arch, Swiftian conclusion to the article suggests that many readers, on both sides of the canon issue, would have found the title quite provocative. Mattheson, in "Die canonische Anatomie," 365.

90. Jacob Adlung, Anleitung zu der musikalischen Gelahrtheit (Erfurt: J. D. Jungnicol, sen., 1758; reprint, Kassel: Birenreiter, 1953), 184. Walther may have received his copy of the Kunstbuch directly from Theile, who had retired by 1718 to nearby Naumburg, the town of his birth, to live with his son. Mattheson, Critica Musica 2:82-83.

91. Walther to Bokemeyer, 3 August 1731, Walther Briefe, 138-48. 92. The letters from Walther to Bokemeyer concerning the copying and sending of

Theile's Musicalisches Kunstbuch are found on pages 182-212 of Walther Briefe. This copy of the Kunstbuch is Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Mus. ms. theor. 913. Walther also sent Boke- meyer Theile's Contrapuncts-Praecepta, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Mus. ms. theor. 917.

93. Heinrich Bokemeyer, introduction to Johann Theile, Grfndlicher Unterricht von den gedoppelten Contrapuncten, title page: "Dieses alzu hartejudicum hab vor 15 Jahren gefdillet, als ich mich in dem praejudicio von dem harmonischen Kunst ... benommen wiirde."

94. Kiimmerling, Katalog der Sammlung Bokemeyer, 11-12.


Theile. In 1689 Osterreich succeeded F6rtsch as Kapellmeister in Gottorf and later took up Theile's former post in Wolfenbuttel. In 1706, Osterreich

gave the twenty-seven-year-old Bokemeyer his first lessons in learned counterpoint. Bokemeyer and Osterreich were, after 1720, colleagues in Wolfenbiittel, where the former bought his teacher's extensive collection of theoretical works and concerted music. Bokemeyer would have been delighted to receive from Walther two precious manuscripts that he had not inherited through the more direct teacher-student lineage that led directly back to Theile. In 1723, the year of "Die canonische Anatomie," Matthe- son noted that "many of [Theile's] teachings are also circulating in manuscript" ("rouliren auch viele von seinen praeceptis im Ms. herum"),95 and copies of his treatises continued to be made through the middle of the eighteenth century.96 Theile's fame as a master of counterpoint spread across Germany: to the east, the K6nigsberg Kapellmeister Johann Va- lentin Meder, who had probably met Theile when on a trip to LUbeck to visit Buxtehude in 1674, praised the great contrapuntist in a letter of 1708;97 and Theile sent his music as far south as Vienna for the edification of Emperor Leopold I, himself an enthusiast of learned music.98

Although it has been compared with J. S. Bach's Musical Offering and The Art of Fugue,99 Theile's Musicalisches Kunstbuch is not a unified set of pieces but consists of miscellaneous compositions probably dating from the 1670s and 1680s.100 The collection is made up of fifteen works of varying lengths and styles, including short canons, several pieces entitled aria (without words), dance suites, mass movements in vocal polyphony, and three sonatas unified only by their use of double counterpoint. The Kunstbuch stands as Theile's greatest effort in composing pieces based on the secret precepts of learned counterpoint.

With its very title, Theile explicitly linked the collection to alchemy. A Kunstbuch was often defined specifically as a book of Hermetic knowledge or magic: "[Diocletian] burned all magic books [Kunstbiicher] he found in Egypt so the Egyptians could not make gold."''1 A Leipzig dictionary of

95. Mattheson, in "Die canonische Anatomie," 353. 96. At least one copy of Theile's Musicalisches Kunstbuch (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Am.

B. 451) was made in the middle of the eighteenth century. 97. Mattheson, Grundlage einer Ehrenpforte, 220. 98. Mattheson, Critica Musica 2:57. 99. Carl Dahlhaus, "Einleitung" to Johann Theile, Musicalisches Kunstbuch, DenkmlIer

norddeutscherMusik 1 (Kassel: Birenreiter, 1965), vii; Hans T. David and Arthur Mendel, eds., The Bach Reader, rev. ed. (New York: Norton, 1966), 40.

100. The mass movements, for example, were probably taken from a printed collection of contrapuntal pieces, the now-lost Noviter inventum Opus musicalis Compositionis 4 & 5 vocum (1686). This work is listed in J. G. Walther, Musicalisches Lexicon (Leipzig: Wolffgang Deer, 1732; facs. ed., Kassel: Birenreiter, 1953), 603. See also Dahlhaus, "Einleitung" to Theile, Musicalisches Kunstbuch, viii.

101. Georg Rollenhagen, Froschmeuseler der Frosch undMause Wunderbahre Hoffhaltunge (Magdeburg: Emeran Kirchner, 1618; 2d ed., Braunschweig: Balthasar Bruber, 1637), nij:


1711 defines Kunstbuch as a book of magic, a livre de secrets.0o2 So, too, Theile's title page introduces a book of precious and powerful knowledge: "Musical Kunstbuch, in which 15 Kunst pieces and secrets, which spring from double counterpoint, are to be met."'03 The language and imagery are common to alchemy: in the Kunstbuch the contrapuntal artifex learns of the secrets that can be used to contrive strange and wonderful pieces. On the title page of the copy of the Kunstbuch that Walther made for

Bokemeyer, Theile refers to double counterpoint as "the highest art and ornament of composition" ("die hbchste Kunst und Zierlichkeit der/ Composition"), a paraphrase of Zarlino, but, as we have seen, not without alchemical resonance when used by Bokemeyer and Walther.'04 On opening the Musicalisches Kunstbuch, the contrapuntal artifex entered a secret, magical world.

Theile provided each of the pieces in the Kunstbuch with a rhyming motto that has the character of a magical incantation. Many alchemical tracts were written in verse, and the combination of emblems (graphic de-

pictions of allegorical figures and processes) and rhyming mottoes is found

throughout the Hermetic literature; as is the case in these treatises, each

piece in Theile's Kunstbuch has a "musical emblem" demonstrating a particular "secret" of the discipline, and Theile's rhymes provide epigrammatic commentary on them. In Atalanta fugiens, a work Theile could well have known, particularly in its 1678 German translation, Maier supplied rhyming mottoes that gloss the allegorical depictions of alchemy both visual (the engravings) and musical (the canons).

Theile's mottoes also appropriate Hermetic language. Alchemy was concerned with the "transformation of metals" ("Verwandelung der Me-

"[Diocletian] verbrand in Aegypten land alle Kunstbticher die er fand, das die Aegypter nicht [so] Gold machten." See also Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsches Wiirterbuch, vol. 5 (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1873), col. 2687. For an early eighteenth-century reference to the Kanst-

baicher of the Egyptians, see "Vorrede," Der Guldin Schatz und Kunstkammer, vol. 5 (Ham- burg: Christian Liebezeit, 1709); reprinted in EroJfnete Geheimnisse, 588.

102. Johann Rdidlein, Europaischer Sprach-Schatz . . . oder Wirter-Buch (Leipzig: Johann Friedrich Braun, 1711; 2d ed., 1719), 572. The same dictionary corroborates the link between Kunst and alchemy: "Artifice can transform lead into gold" ("die Kunst k6nnen das Blei ins Gold verwandeln").

103. Theile, Musicalisches Kunstbuch, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Mus. ms. theor. 913, fol. Ir: "Musicalisches Kunst-Buch, darinnen 15 Kunst-StUicke u. Geheimnifte, welche aus den

doppelten Contrapuncten entspringen, anzutreffen sind." See also Dahlhaus, "Kritischer Ber- icht" to Theile, Musicalisches Kunstbuch, 131. In other treatises as well, Theile encouraged the notion that the contrapuntist's art depended on secret, magical concepts; in the introduction to his Curieuser Unterricht von denen doppelten Contrapuncten (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Mus. ms. theor. 916), Theile describes the contents as the "never before known secrets of the art" ("niemals bekanten Kunstgriffen").

104. Theile, Musicalisches Kunstbuch, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Mus. ms. theor. 913, fol. Ir.


tallen"),'05 and verwandeln (to transform) was the most common verb used to describe the alchemical change in German treatises. Verwandeln is used twice in the Kunstbuch to describe the process of rearranging the voices of a piece, following the precepts of invertible counterpoint, in order to produce another composition.'06 In the tenth piece, for example, a suite of four movements (see Ex. 1), Theile writes that only the clever artifex can discover a second piece hidden within:

Diese alle lassen sich noch einmal verwandeln,

man muss aber auch dabei kltiglich damit handeln.

All of these can be transformed once more,

but one must also proceed very cleverly with them.

No one has yet found the solution to this particular puzzle.'07 The riddle for the fourth piece of the collection, a suite consisting of a

praeludium and five dances in which the staff for the bass line is empty, outlines a similar process of discovery. Only a sufficiently intelligent student, equipped with the requisite knowledge of the secrets of learned coun-

terpoint, will be able to find the solution:

Der Ba1f hat sich hierinnen wo verstecket,

ein Kluger aber solchen bald entdecket.108

The bass has hidden himself somewhere within,

but a clever person will soon enough discover it.

In Walther's copy of the piece (Fig. 3), he did not fill in the bass part. But the enterprising artifex will, after some study, recognize that the soprano line divides into two eleven-bar units that are, in fact, harmonically invertible with each other at the twelfth: the soprano from measures 11 to 22 is taken down two octaves and becomes the bass line for the first half of the piece; transposed down an octave and a half, the soprano line from measures 1 to 11 provides the bass for the second half of the piece. (The solution is given in Ex. 2.) To conclude the piece, Theile tacks on a standard plagal cadence, which is not invertible and is therefore outside the param- eters of the puzzle.

Like the alchemist, the contrapuntal artifex hunts for basic properties intrinsic to the raw materials at hand, as in the rhyme for the ninth piece: Ob ich gleich steh' nur einmal hier, so komm ich doch zweimal herfiir. Wer finden kann, was steckt in mir.109

Although there is but one of me here, I appear two times. Who can find what is hidden in me.

105. "Vorrede" to Valentinus, Chymische Schrifften. 106. Theile, Musicalisches Kunstbuch, ed. Dahlhaus, 76, 104. 107. Dahlhaus, "Kritischer Bericht" to Theile, Musicalisches Kunstbuch, 134. 108. Ibid., 25. 109. Ibid., 75. Like that of number 10 from the Kunstbuch, the contrapuntal problem of

number 9 remains unclear.


Example 1 Johann Theile, Musicalisches Kunstbuch, number 10

Praeludium ' 4

Diese alle lassen sich noch einmal verwandeln, man muss aber auch dabei khiglich damit handeln.

#- 1 1I

-6

0--M II I I .... "• • - r' +4-'- " - " - " " -

I#I

il• I Ir

I i• I

I

?

I

Fr r

SR


Example 1 continued

16

25

.Irf f ftF rI-i

i - --- - - d 20

- ' " i t I • A"•

6m.,,P- op 00 • , . , .

25

isI OP

7f-- Er l f - . OP!." "


Ri-M..!*

FIFFI FO:

Figure 3 Johann Theile, Musicalisches Kunstbuch, number 4. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Mus. ms. theor. 913. Praeludium d 4 with missing bass line, to be found in the soprano using double counterpoint at the twelfth. By permission of the PreuIischer Kulturbesitz, Musik-

abteilung mit Mendelssohn-Archiv.

The musical content of the seventh piece, a five-measure double coun-

terpoint, perhaps bears the most striking similarities to alchemy. Once the alchemist had fabricated the philosophers' stone, he could add this to much larger quantities--the proportions vary in different treatises -of base metals and convert them into gold. In the superscript to number seven (see Ex. 3), Theile alludes to the magical properties of double counterpoint; with sufficient diligence the artifex can fabricate a single counterpoint, which can then be expanded into endless riches: "This completely simple song/ yields of itself many a tone and sound."'?0 Theile constructed the piece so that it could be inverted at the octave and tenth, and allow for melodic inversion, retrograde, and retrograde inversion. Thus, the initial

counterpoint yields innumerable transformations. Once the artifex success-

fully produces a pure contrapuntal nugget such as this, it yields, almost

110. Theile, Musicalisches Kunstbuch, ed. Dahlhaus, 35: "Dieser ganz einfiltige Gesang / gibt von sich vielen Ton und Klang."


Example 2 Johann Theile, Musicalisches Kunstbuch, number 4, solution

Praeludium ' 4

Der BaB hat sich hierinnen wo verstecket, ein Kluger aber solchen bald entdecket.

5

Aill


Example 2 continued

13 / , - A

Iff

'K_

aIII_


Example 3 Johann Theile, Musicalisches Kunstbuch, number 7, selections

(a) Rectus version of five-measure counterpoint

(b) Invertible counterpoint at the octave

(c) Invertible counterpoint at the tenth

(d) Melodic inversion (also admits invertible counterpoint at the octave and the tenth)

(e) Retrograde (also admits invertible counterpoint at the octave and the tenth)

(f) Retrograde inversion (also admits invertible counterpoint at the octave and the tenth)


magically, prodigious quantities of valuable material. Walther's copy of the Kunstbuch includes a great number of the permutations of the five-measure double counterpoint, including thirty-two of the possible two-voice melodic inversions and retrogrades. Example 3 shows a few of these contrapuntal transformations. Through the addition of one or two voices in parallel thirds above and below both voices, a procedure also described by Bernhard in the Tractatus compositionis augmentatus,111 the two-part counterpoint can be expanded into numerous Tricinia and Quatricinia which also work in retrograde and are subjected to the same procedures of melodic and harmonic inversion that Theile had applied to the original two-part piece. Walther also wrote out no fewer than sixty-eight Tricinia and fifty-six Quatricinia derived from Theile's short piece of counterpoint (see Ex. 4).112 The permutations from this single five-measure exercise along with their inversions take up a quarter of the manuscript. Thus the original two-part piece is a sort of "philosophers' counterpoint" that can be transformed and added to other elements to produce inexhaustible quantities of new contrapuntal material.

Later in the Kunstbuch, Theile demonstrated that the different inversions of a contrapuntal matrix of three or more voices--expanded versions of the pure "contrapuntal stone" of number 7-could be linked together to form lengthy, independent compositions such as the three fugal sonatas (numbers 13 through 15) that conclude the collection."3 Just as the basic assumption of alchemy was the possibility of bringing about the transmu- tation of substances, particularly lead into gold, so too the fundamental property of double counterpoint was its transformative power; even the simplest of pieces could yield a seemingly endless number of permutations.

Two of the five surviving copies of the Musicalisches Kunstbuch, both of which date from the middle part of the eighteenth century,"4 open with Theile's ten-part canon entitled the Harmonischer Baum, a piece that suggests further links with alchemy. The canon is presented in the form of a tree with ten branches; the music on the tree's trunk and base make up a separate canon (Fig. 4).115 Theile's tree is similar to representations of the

111. Miiller-Blattau, Die Kompositionslehre Heinrich Schzitzens, 123. 112. Ibid., 35-38. 113. Theile's own regard for these pieces is suggested by the fact that he sent the final

sonata-and perhaps number 14 as well-to Johann Mattheson in 1718. Theile to Matthe- son, January 1718, printed in Mattheson, CriticaMusica 2:282-83.

114. Theile, Musicalisches Kunstbuch, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Am. B. 511/1 and 452. 115. The piece is discussed and a solution printed in Erich Schenk, "Johann Theiles 'Har-

monischer Baum,' " in Musik und Bild, ed. Heinrich Besseler (Kassel: Birenreiter, 1938): 95-100. Schenk was able to find a four-part solution to the base of the tree, but not one of six parts. Neither Walther's copy of the Kunstbuch nor the one he sent to Bokemeyer contains the Harmonischer Baum. The other sources of the Kunstbuch are listed in Dahlhaus, "Kritischer Bericht" to Theile, Musicalisches Kunstbuch, 132.


Example 4 Johann Theile, Musicalisches Kunstbuch, number 7, first Tricinium and first

Quatricinium

A , f I I " • - r

tm old vm .. ,.

i -

i ,

v .

,• ' r" • r " r" .m " IFr

it D

? - . .. i - .. . &K (-07I 1 I-II4I f

do II I I

.

"arbor philosophica," the symbol of Hermetic philosophy (Fig. 5).116 Uses of this arboreal metaphor abound in the alchemical literature, as in the passage from an English edition of Paracelsus's Of the Nature of Things: "It is possible also that Gold, through industry and skill of an expert Al- chymist may bee so far exalted, that it may grow in a glass like a tree, with many wonderful boughs, and leaves, which is indeed pleasant to behold, and most wonderfiull."117 Like the works in the Kunstbuch--and those of Maier's Atalanta fugiens--the Harmonischer Baum is provided with a rhyme, which is written just below the ten-part canon: "Love you most beloved pair / so that one day with a thousand joys / as many children en- circle you / as there are branches on the tree" ("Liebet so ihr liebstern Beyde / dafl ihr einst mit tausend Freude / Kinder sehet um euch gehen / so viel Zweig um Baume stehen"). Marriage provides another central metaphor in the discourse of alchemy. The union of husband and wife is com- monly used to represent the joining of elements in alchemical reactions; the product of this fruitful union is a child, and the married couple remain "in

116. For other representations of the arbor philosophica see Jung, Psychology andAlchemy, 229, 338, 390.

117. Paracelsus, Of the Nature of Things, Lib. 3 (London, 1650), quoted in C. A. Bur- land, The Arts of the Alchemists (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 183.


. . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 7f.

... .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...... . ... ........ ..... ....... .... ... ........ ... ............

..... . ... . WA

:io*

. . ....... . . I VAI

..... . . . .. ... ........ .......... .........

............... Is . ..... ... . ..................... ..... .. . . .. .. . . . . . . . . . . . . Figure 4 Johann Theile, Harmonischer Baum. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Am. B. 451. By permission of the Preuffischer Kulturbesitz, Musikabteilung mit Mendelssohn-Archiv.


RM.

LIN

NO >; W VIEW..

- - - ---- ---- gz :gg` - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Figure 5 Arbor philosophica. Samuel Norton, Mercurius redivirus (Frankfurt, 1630). (Re- printed in Vigilantius, Dreyfaches Hermetisches Kleeblat [Niirnberg, 1667].) By permission of the British Library. Shelf-mark 1034h.33 (1).

the marriage bed of warmth until the perfect birth" ("im Ehebett der

Wairme bis zu der vollkommenen Geburt") of the philosophers' stone.118 Erich Schenk, who published a solution for the canon in 1938, suggested that the Harmonischer Baum was a commemorative piece for a wedding.119

118. Valentinus, "Vom grossen Stein der uhralten Weisen," in Chymische Schrifften, pt. 1, p. 73.

119. Schenk, "Johann Theiles 'Harmonischer Baum,' " 95.


Even if Theile intended only the literal meaning of the text, it is hard to imagine that musician/alchemists such as Bokemeyer and Walther would not have seen the Harmonischer Baum as a musical and graphic allegory of alchemy, especially when such a symbolic canon opened a collection provided with the titleMusicalisches Kunstbuch (Book ofMusicalAlchemy). In his most famous collection, the "father of contrapuntists" fashions himself as a musical alchemist.

And Bokemeyer? In 1740 Mattheson did not deign to accord Boke- meyer a place among the biographical sketches of great German musicians

published in his Grundlage einer Ehrenpforte. Under another man's entry, he simply noted that Bokemeyer "still lives in Wolfenbiittel, where he ca-

pably discharges his functions as Kantor."l20 One year earlier, however, Bokemeyer had been honored for his musical erudition and contrapuntal knowledge, becoming the fourth member of Lorenz Mizler's Correspon- dirende Societit der Musikalischen Wissenschaften, a group joined eight years later by Mizler's teacher, J. S. Bach.121

Given the number of references to "Die canonische Anatomie" in con-

temporary sources, it seems likely that Bach would also have followed the Bokemeyer-Mattheson dispute. Werner Braun hypothesized that the Hu- demann canon of 1727 (BWV 1074), an exemplar of which Bach sent to Mattheson that same year, might have been a demonstration of Bach's support for Bokemeyer's views.122 Along with a 1738 letter to Bokemeyer, Walther enclosed a solution to this canon in Bach's own hand.123 Ten years before Bach joined Bokemeyer as a member of Mizler's society, the Wolfenbiittel Kantor knew of Bach's interest in learned counterpoint.

For his election into the society, Bach submitted the "Canonic Varia- tions on Vom Himmel hoch komm ich daher" (BWV 769) and distributed to the other members an offprint of the six-part canon from the collection of canons built on the bass line of the Goldberg Variations (BWV 1076/

120. Mattheson, Grundlage einerEhrenpforte, 168: "annoch, als Cantor, in Wolffenbfittel, lebet; und mit dem es sich auch tiichtig herumgecantert hat."

121. Lorenz Christoph Mizler, Neu-erdffnete musikalische Bibliothek, 4 vols. (Leipzig: the author, 1739-54), 3:356-57. Mizler himself was an avid chemist and claimed to be in possession of many "chemical secrets" ("chymische Geheimnisse"), one of which involved turn- ing tin into silver through the utterance of certain magical sentences. After many unsuccessful attempts at effecting alchemical transformations, Mizler condemned the search for the philosophers' stone as futile and foolish (Mizler, Neu-erdffnete musikalisches Bibliothek, vol. 1, pt. 4, p. 45; vol. 1, pt. 5, p. 77).

122. Werner Braun, "Bachs Stellung im Kanonstreit," 106-111, esp. 110-11. Matthe- son printed the canon and his own solution in Der vollkommene Capellmeister, but wryly noted that he did not believe it was worth spending too much effort in studying such pieces (pp. 412-13).

123. Walther to Bokemeyer, 24 January 1738, Walther Briefe, 209-12.


1087, no. 13). Bach is seen holding this six-part canon in the famous 1746

portrait of him by Elias Gottlob Haugmann, which may have been presented to the society, though this seems somewhat unlikely.'24

It is quite possible that Bach himself may have seen the copy of Theile's Musicalisches Kunstbuch owned by his Weimar colleague and relative J. G. Walther. Carl Dahlhaus designated the contrapuntal procedure employed by Theile in the three closing sonatas of the Kunstbuch a "permutation fugue," a term originally coined by scholars to describe a technique found in the vocal music of J. S. Bach but invented by Theile.125 Bach may have learned of this peculiar contrapuntal magic from Theile's Kunstbuch.126

Whether Bokemeyer ever saw a copy of Bach's Canonic Variations is not known, though as a member of Mizler's society he would have been in a

good position to do so. In any case, Bokemeyer would have been delighted that the collection could be seen--and heard, for this was crucial in coun-

tering aspersions that counterpoint was merely "Augenmusik"-to exem-

plify his former assertion that even the most galant of idioms derived from, or at least could be based on, canon. The flowing canons of the first two variations might be heard to evoke Bokemeyer's canonis naturalis, while the third variation, whose modishly ornamented cantabile line sings above a "fundament" of canonic voices, brings to mind Bokemeyer's belief that the most expressive and natural melodies are guided by canon (Ex. 5).127 A

quarter century after "Die canonische Anatomie" and his public renunci- ation of learned counterpoint, Bokemeyer might nonetheless have privately seen Bach's Vom Himmel hoch as a demonstration of one of his central arguments against Mattheson: that canon was the starting point in a chain of resemblance connecting all genres, that it was the quintessence of music.'28

Finally, there is a more basic level at which the principles of alchemy might be brought to bear on Bach's contrapuntal music. Leibniz and New- ton had turned to Renaissance occultism and undertaken their alchemical investigations in partial response to the mechanical philosophy of Des- cartes, which threatened to endorse atheism by removing God's continuing

124. Christoph Wolff, Kritischer Bericht to Johann Sebastian Bach, Neue Ausgabe S'mtli- cher Werke: Kanons, Musikalisches Opfer, ser. 8, vol. 1 (Kassel: Birenreiter, 1976), 20.

125. Paul Walker, Fugue in German Theory (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Buffalo, 1987), 387. Walker points out that Theile's permutation fugues disprove Roger Bullivant's assertion that "in his vocal works, Bach introduced an apparently new technique, the 'Permutationsfuge' " (see Bullivant, "Fugue," in The New Grove Dictionary ofMusic and Musicians 7:15.

126. Carl Dahlhaus, "Zur Geschichte der Permutationsfuge," Bach Jahrbuch 46 (1959): 95-110.

127. I discuss this aspect of the Canonic Variations at length in my essay "On Consuming Pork or Canary: Bach and the Critique of Taste," forthcoming in the Journal ofMusicology.

128. F. W. Marpurg, Abhandlung von der Fuge, 2 vols. (Berlin: A. Haude and J. C. Spener, 1753-54; reprint, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1970), 2:30-31.


Example 5 J. S. Bach, BWV 769, variation 3, mm. 1-4

Variatio 3 Canone alla settima

Cantabile

Pedal

3

9-) ~'0

agency from the physical world, and therefore his control over the forms and interactions of matter. If successful alchemical transmutations could be achieved, however, they would demonstrate that matter itself was imbued with what Newton called a "vegetable [i.e., living] spirit." Alchemy provided a means of proving God's vital presence in the natural world.129 The

perils of mechanical philosophy were well known in Leipzig at the end of Bach's lifetime. The French physician and philosopher Julien Offray de La Mettrie published his L'homme machine (Man the Machine) in 1748 and that same year sought refuge at the court of Frederick the Great. Two important responses to La Mettrie were published in Leipzig in 1749,130 and in 1754 the theologian Johann Michael Schmidt pointed to the Art of Fugue (BWV 1080) -and in particular the chorale on Wenn wir in hiichsten Nithen seyn (BWV 668a), which was appended to the collection to make up for the incompleteness of the final fugue--as a decisive rebuttal of the

129. See Dobbs and Jacob, Newton and the Culture ofNewtonianism, 20-27; and Coud- ert, Leibniz and the Kabbalah, 8.

130. These are Frantzen, Widerlegung des 'L'Homme machine,'" and D. B. L. Tralles, De machine et anima humana. See Friedrich Albert Lange, History ofMaterialism, trans. Ernest C. Thomas, 2d ed. (London: Triibner and Co., 1879; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1974), 137-38.


tenets of materialism because the piece could neither have been composed nor could it be appreciated if humans had no soul.'3'

Indeed, considered from the perspective of Bach's contemporary contrapuntists, the Art of Fugue offers an alchemical, vitalistic argument against materialism. Only the talented and righteous contrapuntal artificer could fabricate a powerful and active subject--the analogy to the "philosophers' stone" presents itself- that could be used to create vast musical treasures: the greatest composers were those most adept at fashioning musical material that revealed God's agency in the world. Magically, the simple D-minor subject of the Art of Fugue could yield innumerable fugues and canons in a multitude of genres and could mingle with numerous coun- tersubjects. For alchemist/contrapuntists such as Bokemeyer, these mirac- ulous combinations could be proof that God's living spirit was present at the most basic level of musical creation.

In 1722, when Bokemeyer was writing his letter in defense of canon, the scientific periodical Parnassus Boicus began publication in Munich. In its empirical approach and emphasis on verifiability, the journal is an important early document of scientific methods in Germany.132 A year after Bokemeyer's defeat in "Die canonische Anatomie," an article appeared in Parnassus Boicus claiming to give "fundamental proof that it is impossible to make gold."133 Alchemy continued to enjoy wide acceptance, however, through the remainder of the first half of the eighteenth century; both the 1732 and the 1744 editions of a preeminent German scientific lexicon, Zedler's Universallexikon aller Wissenschaften und Kiinste, sanctioned the validity of the Hermetic project.'34 But the articles in Parnassus Boicus marked the beginning of the end for alchemy as an accepted practice, calling as they did for a rigorous, scientific examination of Hermetic principles. Such investigations would expose the quasi-secret, cherished principles of alchemy as false, robbing the discipline of its mystique.

Mattheson and Heinichen called similarly for the rational codification of the principles of counterpoint in order to demystify its closely guarded precepts. The mid-eighteenth-century advocate of counterpoint and fervent Bach supporter F. W. Marpurg answered their call, codifying the procedures of learned counterpoint in his Abhandlung von der Fuge (1753-54). In the treatise Marpurg looks back on the cult of counterpoint as a scientist

131. Johann Michael Schmidt, Musico-Theologica (Bayreuth and Hof: J. G. Vierling, 1754), 195. See also David and Mendel, The Bach Reader, 255-56.

132. Herwig Buntz, "Alchemie und Aufldirung: Die Diskussion in der Zeitschrift Par- nassus Boicus (1722-1740)," in Die Alchemie in der europdischen Kultur- und Wissenschafts- geschichte, ed. Meinel, 327-38.

133. Parnassus Boicus, oder: Neu-eroffieter Mosen-Berg 3 (Munich: Johann Lucas Straub, 1725): 149-58, 221-25: "Griindlicher Beweigi / daf; es unm6glich seye / Gold zu machen."

134. Buntz, "Alchemie und Aufklirung," 337.


regarding the irrational ways of a strange mystical group of musicians, through generations sworn to a conspiracy of silence. Of a contrapuntal composition which could be inverted in each of the three types of double

counterpoint (at the octave, tenth, twelfth), but could also be performed in contrary motion, in retrograde, and in retrograde contrary motion, Mar-

purg writes:

One reads not only in Mr. Kapellmeister Heinichen that the musicians of old must have considered this kind of piece the greatest secret in music, but one can also come to this conclusion because the topic was only passed on through oral tradition, and was without doubt thought of as being as valuable as gold. No one trusted himself to write a word of it, until it gradually disappeared completely. 135

The piece he is describing is, of course, very much like the five-measure

counterpoint from Theile's Kunstbuch (Ex. 3),136 a collection Marpurg knew. Because the knowledge of how to create such a piece had, according to Marpurg, vanished with the secret "cult" itself, Marpurg brings the skills of the rational investigator to bear on their lost art. He describes and ex-

plains the peculiarities of this contrapuntal tour de force and provides his own example, uncovering the secret and telling it to the world.

The program to debunk counterpoint urged on by Mattheson and Heinichen and executed by Marpurg and others had started from the

premise that the nature of music, even the intricacies of learned counterpoint, was ultimately knowable and explicable, that obscure mysticism and secret practices should be exposed to the unforgiving light of thorough investigation for the general enlightenment of what they called the musical republic. But contrapuntists in the tradition that extended from Theile to Bokemeyer saw counterpoint as possessed of magical properties that would always remain unknowable and would draw musicians to them in an at- mosphere of awe and fascination. As Theile's student and colleague Johann Philipp F6rtsch put it in his Musicalischer Compositions Tractat, a treatise later owned by Bokemeyer, "The unfathomable nature of music is certainly to be perceived in [canon and double counterpoint] more than in other pieces of music."137 The encyclopedists of canon and double counterpoint,

135. Marpurg, Abhundlung von der Fuge 2:45-46: "Daf; die Alten einen Satz von dieser Art als das gr6dfte Geheimniif in der Musik betrachtet haben miissen, lieset man nicht allein beym Herrn Capellmeister Heinichen, sondern man kann es auch daraus sehen, weil die Sache nur allezeit durch miindliche Traditiones und ohne Zweifel ftir gutes baares Geld von dem einen auf den andern gekommen ist, und keiner sich getrauet hat, ein W6rtgen davon zu schreiben, bis sie endlich gar allmdihlich verschwunden ist." Heinichen mentions this procedure in Der General-Bass, 936.

136. The only requirement that Theile's piece fails to satisfy is that of allowing inversion at the twelfth.

137. Johann Philipp F6rtsch, Musicalischer Compositions Tractat, Staatsbibliothek zu Ber- lin, Mus. ms. theor. 300, fol. 33r: "[Es]ist gewiBlich hierinnen die unergriindlichkeit der Music mehr ali in andren Stucken der Music zu spiiren."


such as Marpurg, could codify the precepts of a once secret art, but they could never explain its mysterious magical properties. The later eighteenth- century devotees of learned counterpoint dealt only with mechanics and rules rather than with the associated meanings and mysteries that had been an intrinsic part of the discipline for preceding generations fascinated by this "highest and most beautiful art."

Abstract

This essay demonstrates the importance of alchemy to the theory and practice of learned counterpoint as articulated in the writings of a group of early eighteenth-century German musicians, in particular, those of canon enthusiast and alchemist Heinrich Bokemeyer (1679-1751). While leading eighteenth-century theorists such as Johann Mattheson argued vigorously against the persistence of occult beliefs in music, the correspondence of J. G. Walther with Bokemeyer reveals a lively discourse on the principles of Hermeticism in conjunction with the exchange of counterpoint manuscripts, one of the most important of which was Johann Theile's Musica- lisches Kunstbuch. The title and contents of this collection, as well as the

pictorial and contrapuntal features of another of Theile's creations, the Harmonischer Baum, suggest further links with alchemy. In 1723-24, Bokemeyer became engaged in a dispute with Mattheson over the merits of canon; this debate was published as "Die canonische Anatomie" in Mat- theson's periodical Critica musica. Bokemeyer's lengthy defense of learned

counterpoint draws heavily on alchemical metaphors and Hermetic con-

cepts. Bokemeyer would later become a member, along with J. S. Bach, of Lorenz Mizler's Societit der Musicalischen Wissenschaften. Bokemeyer may have seen in Bach's Canonic Variations (BWV 769), presented to the

society on Bach's admission in 1747, a reflection of the aesthetic principles articulated in "Die canonische Anatomie." While learned counterpoint's role in composition and pedagogy diminished in the years following the publication of "Die canonische Anatomie," midcentury theorists such as F. W. Marpurg continued to explore the complex workings of canon, but they did so as enlightened encyclopedists holding none of the occult views that had informed the musical belief system of Bokemeyer and the counterpoint devotees of the previous generation.

alchemy in the age of counterpoint

Documents

weimar kunstkammer

jstor archive

nature of mercury

adjacent ducal kunstkammer

ducal library

old man

terms conditions of

university of california